David Does Death

Those of you of a certain age will recognize the similarity of the title of this post to that of a movie from the late 70s, but the similarity ends with the alliteration, I trust.

I have planned Mozart’s Requiem for next April, conducted the “summer sing” reading of it the other day. But we are also performing Durufle’s beautiful Requiem in 2010. And I have in mind as one of seveeral possibilities that the first half of the Mozart concert might have Barber’s Agnus Dei, which is a choral setting of his Adagiofor Strings; we’d sing the Agnus while the strings play the Adagio, as they are identical. This is a heart-wrenching work. At first glance, in 2010 David Does Death.

We are thinking about giving out anti-depressants at the intermission.

In truth, the two requiems – masses for the dead – are not depressing, though their reason for being is. The mass for the dead is at times a plea that the departed souls not face the horrors of eternal damnation, and in some cases – notably in Verdi and Berlioz – these horrors are vividly depicted musically. But much of the text is not about torment, but about eternal light, and is a more gentle plea to “let perpetual light shine upon these departed souls.”

And in Mozart and Durufle, and in Faure, we don’t have the musical depiction of hell that we find in the theatrical Verdi and Berlioz. We find in the French composers glimpses of heaven, and the msuic of Mozart is so completely wonderful that heaven beckons no matter what the words, it seems.